Anne Clarissa Eden, Dowager Countess of Avon (née Spencer-Churchill;
born 28 June 1920) is the widow of Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon
(1897–1977), who was British Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957. She
married Eden in 1952, becoming Lady Eden in 1954 when he was made a
Knight of the Garter, and then becoming Countess of Avon in 1961 on
her husband's elevation to the peerage. She is also the niece of the
prime minister Winston Churchill. Her memoir, sub-titled From
Churchill to Eden, was published in 2007 under the name of Clarissa
Eden.

Contents

1 Antecedents

1.1 Family

2 Early life

2.1 Paris, Tuscany and London (1937–1939)
2.2 Second World War: Oxford and the Foreign Office
2.3 Post-war

3 Memoir (2007)
4 Friends and acquaintances

4.1 Early admirers
4.2 Other friends

5 Relationship with Anthony Eden

5.1 Winston Churchill and the wartime link
5.2 Marriage to Eden
5.3 Attitudes to the marriage
5.4 Married life

Antecedents[edit]
She was born in 1920, the daughter of Major Jack Spencer-Churchill
(1880–1947), the younger brother of Winston Churchill, by his
marriage to Lady Gwendoline ("Goonie") Bertie (1885–1941), a
daughter of the 7th Earl of Abingdon, who had been married in 1908.
She is thus a niece of Winston Churchill, who was Prime Minister
during the Second World War, and a granddaughter of Lord Randolph
Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1886–87, and his wife the
American society beauty Jennie Jerome. Her paternal great-grandfather
was the 7th Duke of Marlborough and her maternal
great-great-grandfather, the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry,[1]
half-brother of the 2nd Marquess, who, as Viscount Castlereagh was
Foreign Secretary during the Congress of Vienna of 1815 that followed
the Napoleonic Wars.
Family[edit]
Jack Churchill, born in 1880, became an army officer and served with
distinction in the Boer War, after which he returned to civilian life,
having been found a position as a stockbroker by the financier Sir
Ernest Cassel. At the time this was considered an unsuitable career
for a gentleman, and in 1907 his proposed marriage to the
"vivacious"[2] Lady Gwendoline had to be postponed because her mother
thought him too poor. Though self-effacing and inoffensive, a good
deal of unfounded rumour attached to him as a young man (as it did to
much of the Churchill clan, although in some cases for better reason):
among other things, it was suggested that his natural father was the
fifth Earl of Roden (or, less plausibly, the Austro-Hungarian
Ambassador to Britain, Count Karl Kinsky[3]) and that he had murdered
Lord Percy, heir to the Duke of Northumberland, who had died in
mysterious circumstances in 1909 and was whispered to have been the
lover of Clementine Hozier, whom Winston Churchill married in 1908.[4]
It appears also that Winston had proposed marriage to Lady Gwendoline,
who had turned him down in favour of his brother.[5] In the 1920s, the
mere fact that his brother was a stockbroker caused some awkwardness
when Winston was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Jack Churchill fought
again in the First World War and was awarded both the Croix de Guerre
and the Légion d'Honneur.
Clarissa Spencer-Churchill's elder brothers were Johnnie
(1909–1992), an artist, and Henry Winston (known as Peregrine)
(1913–2002).

Early life[edit]
Clarissa Spencer-Churchill was born at her parents' house in the
Cromwell Road, Kensington, London. She was educated at Kensington
Preparatory School and then at Downham School, Hatfield Heath, a
"fashionable boarding school ... orientated to horses",[6] which she
disliked and left early without any formal qualifications.[7] Seventy
years later she said she had also felt the need to get away from
home—"I just wanted to get out from under the whole thing of being
loved too much".[8]
Paris, Tuscany and London (1937–1939)[edit]
In 1937 Clarissa studied art in Paris.[9] Her mother had asked the
British Ambassador, Sir George Clerk, to keep a watchful eye on her,
an unintended consequence of this being that she was taken under the
wing of an Embassy press secretary who, with his wife, introduced her
to a round of café society parties.[8] Among the friends she made in
Paris were the monocled Fitzroy Maclean, a future politician and
adventurer who was then third secretary at the embassy, and the writer
Marthe Bibesco. Together with two female contemporaries, she made a
visit to the Folies Bergère, an unusual destination for 16-year-old
girls, where the singer Josephine Baker, clad only in a circlet of
bananas, became the first naked female body she had ever seen.[6]
In the summer of 1937 Clarissa accompanied Julian Asquith (grandson of
the Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith) and his mother, Katherine,
on a tour, mainly by third class rail, across the Apennines in the
Tuscany region of Italy.[6] Among other artistic treasures, she saw
for the first time the 15th century frescos by Piero della Francesca
at Arezzo, one of which, "The Queen of Sheba Adoring the Holy Wood"
(c.1452), she nominated in 2010 as her favourite painting: "in an age
of violence he went on painting clearly and calmly".[10]
When Clarissa returned to London she enrolled at the Slade School of
Fine Art. Around this time she displayed her individualism by
acquiring a specially tailored trouser suit along the lines of those
associated with the actress Marlene Dietrich[6] after the latter's
appearance in the film, Morocco (1930). 1938 was the future Lady
Avon's "coming out" year and she was regarded as "one of the more
notable débutantes"[11] in a "vintage year for beautiful girls",[12]
but, having mixed with older and more sophisticated people in Paris,
she seems to have disdained the circuit—since described by Anne de
Courcy as "more or less naive seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds
suddenly flung into a round of gaities"[13]—and was never presented
at Court. Another débutante of 1938, Deborah Mitford, later Duchess
of Devonshire, recalled Clarissa Spencer-Churchill as exhibiting "more
than a whiff of Garbo in a dress by Maggy Rouff of Paris".[12][14]
Among those with whom Clarissa danced at that year's Liberal Ball was
the future double agent Donald Maclean, who complained that she was
too smart to be "a proper Liberal girl like the Bonham-Carters or the
Asquiths".[15] She also knew Guy Burgess, who fled to Russia in 1951
when he and Maclean were about to be unmasked as traitors. A 2015
biography of Burgess, a homosexual, contained claims that, encouraged
by his Soviet "handlers", he had contemplated marriage to Clarissa.
However, the latter, then aged 95, denied that they had been close.
She described Burgess as "courteous, amusing, nice and good company",
but said that he had been "standoffish" towards her and did not wish
any friendship to develop.[16]
In 1939 Clarissa spent another four months in Paris and in August of
that year travelled to Romania as guest of the novelist Elizabeth
Bibesco and her husband Antoine (Elizabeth's mother, Margot Asquith,
having been left distraught at the conclusion of her daughter's visit
to her in London earlier in the year[17]). Clarissa only just managed
to return to England—on one of the last flights out of
Bucharest—before the start of the Second World War.[6]
Second World War: Oxford and the Foreign Office[edit]
In 1940, encouraged by economist Roy Harrod, Clarissa went to Oxford
to study philosophy, although not as an undergraduate because of her
lack of qualifications. While there she became associated with, among
other leading academics, Isaiah Berlin and Maurice Bowra.[9] Lady
Antonia Fraser, whose father, later Lord Longford, was a Fellow of
Christ Church, has described her as "the don's delight".[8] For a
short while she was tutored by A. J. Ayer, a future Wykeham Professor
of Logic known for his libidinous lifestyle,[18] although his
womanising was not apparently extended to her.[6][19]
When Clarissa moved back to London, she decoded ciphers in the
Communications Department of the Foreign Office, where her future
husband was the Secretary of State from 1940 to 1945. One of her
colleagues was Anthony Nutting, who in 1956 resigned from Eden's
government because of his opposition to the Suez operation. For a time
the future Lady Avon lived in a roof-top room at the Dorchester Hotel,
which she obtained at a cut-price rate because of its vulnerability to
bombing[6] (although the building was a modern, steel-framed structure
with extensive underground accommodation that was considered
relatively safe during air raids[20]).
Post-war[edit]
After the war Clarissa Spencer-Churchill worked at London Films for
the producer Sir Alexander Korda, who she thought made "terrible
mistakes without really knowing what has happened",[21] and as a
reviewer for the fashion magazine Vogue. She met the actor Orson
Welles, who became a dining companion, on the set of the film The
Third Man (1949), and escorted actress Paulette Goddard, who played
Mrs Cheverley in Korda's production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband
(1947), on a "rather wild trip" to Brussels.[8] During the latter
excursion Goddard expressed a wish to attend a pornographic show, but,
although Korda's representatives made arrangements for this, she shied
away when she and Clarissa, having climbed "a flight of shabby
stairs", were greeted by two men in black suits.[6]
Clarissa Spencer-Churchill also worked for the short-lived monthly
magazine Contact, established by George (later Lord) Weidenfeld and
edited by Philip Toynbee. Weidenfeld was keen to expand into book
publishing and Contact, which appeared with a hard cover, offered a
means of circumventing post-war paper quotas.[6][22] Among those
Clarissa persuaded to contribute to the magazine was the cookery
writer Elizabeth David, whose recipes were to become very influential
in the 1950s. Through Weidenfeld she also became a close friend of
Marcus Sieff, later Chairman of the retailer Marks and Spencer.[6]
As a result of this eclectic early career, she widened her circle of
friends and contacts beyond those in society and politics with whom
she already had close connections. As one of Anthony Eden's
biographers put it, she was "equally at home in the worlds of Hatfield
and Fitzrovia",[23] while a reviewer of her memoir wrote that "few
lives can have touched so many social worlds, or graced them so
elegantly".[24] Even so, Lady Avon did not impress everyone: after the
future Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher met her at a Conservative
Party ball in 1954, she wrote dismissively to her sister, "Mrs Anthony
Eden received us. Really she is a most colourless personality".[25]
Memoir (2007)[edit]
Glimpses of Clarissa Spencer-Churchill's life as a single woman, for
example, in diaries and other reminiscences, are quite extensive.
Although she had indicated to the former Labour Member of Parliament
Woodrow Wyatt that no memoir of her own would appear until after her
death,[26] a volume, edited by Cate Haste (Lady Bragg), was
nevertheless published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson in 2007,[6] and
Phoenix brought out a paperback edition in 2008. In 2004 Haste had
collaborated with Cherie Booth, wife of the then Prime Minister Tony
Blair, to produce a biographical chapter about Lady Avon as part of a
wider study of Prime Ministerial spouses.[8] Clarissa Avon noted that
after meeting Haste she realised that the latter's "enthusiasm and
professionalism could make it happen".[6]
A photograph on the dust jacket of her memoir, depicting a young,
pensive Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, cigarette in hand, conveyed an
alluring and slightly Bohemian image. The book was generally well
received by critics[27] and even generated an engaging "spoof" in the
satirical magazine Private Eye ("In the early 1950s I married Anthony
Eden, a politician of above average height, with a prominent moustache
..."[28]). Historian Andrew Roberts described it as "the last great
British autobiography of the pre-war and wartime era",[29] while art
critic John McEwen remarked on its "witty and elegant restraint".[10]
Friends and acquaintances[edit]
Early admirers[edit]
Having lost both parents by her mid twenties, Clarissa
Spencer-Churchill was comparatively independent for a young woman of
her time. In later years she remarked to Woodrow Wyatt on "how much
more restricted" girls were when she was young, while conceding that
she herself had had her first affair at 17 with a "man who was quite
well-known and … still alive [in 1986]".[30] She had many devoted
admirers, an early "ardent suitor" being Sir Colville Barclay, briefly
a diplomat and later a painter, who was stepson of Lord Vansittart,
former permanent head of the Foreign Office.[31]

Clarissa Eden in April 1938

Lady Avon was quoted by Wyatt as having told him that she had resisted
the amorous advances of Duff Cooper, wartime Information Minister and
British Ambassador in Paris 1944–47, who, thirty years her senior,
had also been a friend of her mother:[32] "I was the only woman who he
never got more than a peck on the cheek from".[33] She informed Cooper
in 1947, following a weekend in the country with Anthony Eden, at
which the only other guest was the French Ambassador to Britain, that
Eden "never stops trying to make love to her".[34] When Cooper was
raised to the peerage (eventually choosing the title Viscount
Norwich), he sought Clarissa's views as to a title—"Think, child,
think ... Have you any suggestions? (not funny ones)"[35] – and she
was the recipient of the last letter that he wrote (from White's club)
shortly before his death at sea on New Year's Day, 1954.[35]
Other friends[edit]
Among the future Clarissa Avon's many other friends, a number of whom
were some years older than she, were the novelists Evelyn Waugh,
Anthony Powell, and Nancy Mitford (whose sister Deborah wrote of an
encounter with Lady Avon some 20 years after they had been débutantes
together that she "found her rather alarming"[36]), painter Lucian
Freud, and choreographer Frederick Ashton. When she was still in her
teens James Pope-Hennessy modelled on her the character of Perdita in
London Fabric (1939) and dedicated the book "To Clarissa".[6] Gerald,
Lord Berners used her as the basis of a character in his novel Far
From the Madding War (1941), while photographer Cecil Beaton, 16 years
her senior, treated her as a special confidante and introduced her to
the reclusive Swedish actress Greta Garbo.[37] The journalist and
author Sofka Zinovieff has claimed that, after her grandmother,
Jennifer Fry (of the Fry's chocolate family), separated in 1944 from
her grandfather, Robert Heber-Percy, who was Lord Berners' closest
friend, Clarissa and Cecil Beaton amused themselves by riffling
through underclothes and love letters that Jennifer had left in a
drawer at Berners' country home, Faringdon House, in Oxfordshire.[38]
A few years' later, while working at Contact, Clarissa became friends
with the writer and journalist Alan Ross, who subsequently married
Jennifer Fry.[6]
Lady Avon thought the writer and horticulturalist Vita Sackville-West
(whose husband, the politician and diplomat Harold Nicolson was a
friend of her mother) "an interesting romantic figure", but felt
"dunched" by her "remote and rather superior" manner. Visiting her at
Sissinghurst some years later, she "thought the less of her" for
troubling to provide, evidently in a hurry, table napkins that were
still damp.[6] Like Clarissa herself, many of her acquaintances
frequented the bookshop Heywood Hill, next to the hairdresser
Trumper's in Mayfair's Curzon Street, which, during the war was
managed by Nancy Mitford and became a regular meeting place:[6]
according to Mitford's sister, Diana, Lady Mosley, "its ground floor
room didn't just look like a private club, it very nearly was
one".[39]
Clarissa was a long-standing friend of Ann Fleming, wife of novelist
Ian Fleming and lover of Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labour Party
from 1955 to 1963, who had previously been married to Viscount
Rothermere. In 1952, she and composer and playwright Noël Coward
became godparents to the Flemings' son Caspar,[40] who died of a drug
overdose in 1975. In later years, as a widow, she was evidently close
to the influential solicitor Lord Goodman.[41] Another long-standing
social acquaintance was Labour Minister Roy (later Lord) Jenkins, also
a friend of Ann Fleming. Jenkins's official biographer chose, as an
example of the broadly-based groups Jenkins would entertain at his
home at East Hendred, a small party assembled there in March
1994—Lady Avon, together with the architectural historian James
Lees-Milne, Jenkins' publisher Roland Philipps and their wives.[42]
Relationship with Anthony Eden[edit]
Clarissa Spencer-Churchill first met her future husband at Cranborne,
Dorset (home of the future 5th Marquess of Salisbury) in 1936, when
she was 16. He was already famous for his elegant attire and Homburg
hat, and she was struck by Eden's unusual pinstriped tweed
trousers.[43]
Winston Churchill and the wartime link[edit]
There was some further contact during the war, by virtue of the
circles in which she and Eden both moved and through her uncle
Winston, who became Prime Minister in May 1940. As an illustration of
her occasional proximity to the centre of power, between meetings of
the War Cabinet on 30 May 1940, when the Dunkirk evacuation was at its
height, Clarissa was present when Churchill lunched with her parents
and the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough.[44] Lady Avon has described
this occasion as "a nightmare, with news of people's deaths coming in
...".[45] After her mother's death in 1941, she stayed at Chequers,
the Prime Minister's country home in Buckinghamshire.
R .A. Butler, then Minister of Education, recalled a dinner party in
Eden's flat above the Foreign Office, following the German invasion of
the Soviet Union in 1941. Attempting to defuse an argument between
Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook about their respective motivation
during the Abdication crisis of 1936, Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, just
turned 21, proclaimed with patent improbability that she had three
favourites, King Edward VIII, King Leopold III of Belgium and the
aviator Charles Lindbergh.[46] (All three men, for various reasons,
would not have appealed much to Churchill at that point in the war.)
Marriage to Eden[edit]
A more defined relationship with Eden, who was a married man 23 years
older than Clarissa, developed gradually after they had sat next to
each other at a dinner party in about 1947. Eden had been monopolised
for much of the meal by a woman on his other side and afterwards, in
an undertone, invited Clarissa out to dinner.[47] In 1950 Eden was
divorced from his first wife, Beatrice, née Beckett (1905–57).
Although she was a Roman Catholic and her church was opposed to
divorce, Clarissa Spencer-Churchill married Eden, who had become
Foreign Secretary again in 1951, in a civil ceremony at Caxton Hall,
London on 14 August 1952. This event drew large crowds, on a level
with those earlier in the year for the wedding of film stars Elizabeth
Taylor and Michael Wilding,[8] prompting Harold Macmillan, Minister of
Housing, to note that "it's extraordinary how much 'glamour' he [Eden]
still has and how popular he is".[48] The wedding reception was held
at 10, Downing Street, the official residence of the prime minister,
who at the time was Clarissa's uncle, Winston Churchill.
Attitudes to the marriage[edit]
Eden remains the only British Prime Minister to have been divorced
(although he was one of nine to have been married twice[49]). There
was criticism of the marriage in the Church Times—"Mr. Eden's action
this week shows how far the climate of public opinion in this matter
has changed for the worse"[50]—and from some others in the Anglican
church, including the Archbishop of Sydney, who drew parallels with
Edward VIII's having given up the throne to marry an American
divorcée. Harold Macmillan, among others, thought such comparisons
unfair: "Miss Churchill cannot be compared with Mrs Simpson, who had
had two husbands"[51] However, the marriage drew also the opprobrium
of Evelyn Waugh,[52] a convert to Roman Catholicism after divorce from
his first wife, who professed to have been in love with Clarissa
Spencer-Churchill himself[6] and who, a few years earlier, had
repeatedly berated the poet John Betjeman for his Anglo-Catholic
beliefs.[53] Waugh enquired of Clarissa Eden, "Did you never think
that you were contributing to the loneliness of Calvary by your
desertion [of the faith]?".[6]
On the eve on the wedding, John Colville, a long-time private
secretary of Winston Churchill, who in his younger days had been part
of the same social "set" as Churchill's niece, recorded in his diary
that Clarissa, who was staying at Churchill's home at Chartwell, Kent,
was "very beautiful, but ... still strange and bewildering". He added
that Churchill "feels avuncular to his orphaned niece, gave her a
cheque for £500 and told me that he thought she had a most unusual
personality".[54] According to Lady Avon herself, Churchill's wife
Clementine thought her "too independent and totally unsuitable",[6]
while the marriage is said to have exacerbated the antagonism towards
Eden of the Churchills' often wayward son Randolph, who, having
initially defended his cousin to Evelyn Waugh, gave her "two years to
knock him [Eden] into shape".[23] His subsequent attacks on Eden in
the press culminated in a scathing biography, The Rise and Fall of Sir
Anthony Eden (1959).
The issues relating to the Edens' marriage resurfaced in 1955, when
Eden was prime minister. In that year Princess Margaret, sister of the
Queen, announced that "mindful of the Church's teaching that Christian
marriage is indissoluble", she had decided not to marry Group Captain
Peter Townsend, a divorcé.[55] Although recently available evidence
suggests that the Eden government was prepared to be reasonably
accommodating towards such a marriage and that Margaret would have
needed only to renounce her right of succession to the throne,[56]
Townsend reflected in the 1970s that

Eden could not fail to sympathise with the Princess, all the more so
that while his own second marriage had incurred no penalty, either for
him or his wife, he had to warn the Princess that my second marriage
– to her – would [mean] she would have to renounce her royal
rights, functions and income.[57]

Married life[edit]
Historian Hugh Thomas noted that, though "non-political", Lady Avon
was interested in foreign affairs, having written a Berlin diary for
the literary magazine Horizon.[58] The first five years of her
marriage were dominated by Eden's political career and by the effects
of a botched operation on his gall bladder in 1953, which caused
lasting problems.[59] Eden's private secretary, Evelyn Shuckburgh,
recalled Lady Eden's role in ensuring that the complaint that led to
the operation had been diagnosed properly: "When Eden acquired a
loving wife, Sir [Horace] Evans was called in ..."[60] Before then
Eden had travelled with a tin box containing medicaments that ranged
from aspirins to morphia injections.[61]
Lady Avon maintained many of her wider acquaintances. For example,
Cecil Beaton and Greta Garbo visited 10 Downing Street at her
invitation in October 1956. They drank vodka and ice and Beaton
recorded Lady Avon's observation that her husband was kept awake by
the sound of motor scooters,[62] which were growing in popularity
among young people in the 1950s. Lady Avon is said to have murmured,
"he can't keep away", as Eden, in Beaton's words, "gangled in like a
colt" and proclaimed to Garbo, who had a cigarette holder between her
teeth, that he had always wanted to meet her.[62]
The Edens' marriage, which lasted until his death on 14 January 1977,
was, by all accounts, an extremely happy one,[63] though Lady Avon
miscarried in 1954[43] and there were no children. Her stepson,
Nicholas, Eden's surviving son from his first marriage, who succeeded
him as 2nd Earl of Avon, was a Minister in Margaret Thatcher's
Government in the 1980s, but died of AIDS in 1985. At this point the
earldom became extinct.
Eden's premiership[edit]
Churchill had told Lady Avon, following her honeymoon in 1952, that he
wanted to give up the premiership.[64] However, it was not until 6
April 1955 that Eden succeeded him as Prime Minister, shortly
afterward winning a general election in which the Conservative Party
polled the largest percentage of the popular vote recorded by a party
between 1945 and the present day.[65] Colville noted that, at a dinner
attended by the Queen to mark Churchill's retirement, the Duchess of
Westminster had put her foot through Lady Avon's train, causing the
monarch's consort, The Duke of Edinburgh, to remark, "that's torn it,
in more than one sense".[66]
Eden's premiership lasted less than two years. For much of this period
Eden was the subject of hostility from elements of the Conservative
press, notably the Daily Telegraph,[67] the wife of whose chairman,
Lady Pamela Berry (an ambitious and sometimes spiteful society
hostess, described by the biographer of her father, Lord Birkenhead,
as "the politician manquée of the second generation"[68]), was said
by some to have had a "blood row" (Macmillan's phrase) with Lady
Avon.[69] The latter's attempts to make up this puzzling rift were
apparently shunned.[70]
Chatelaine at Downing Street and Chequers[edit]
As hostess at 10 Downing Street, Lady Avon oversaw the organisation of
official receptions. She brought in new caterers, causing US Secretary
of State John Foster Dulles to lose a bet with a fellow dinner guest
that he knew "exactly what every course is going to be".[43] Because
the Edens' tenure was so short, Lady Avon's plans to return the fabric
and furniture of the house to the styles of the 1730s, when it was
built, were never realised.[8]
Lady Avon was not very fond of Chequers, though she did take a keen
interest in the garden and grounds, introducing old fashioned roses
and increasing the range of fruit trees. However, her successor, Lady
Dorothy Macmillan, so keen a horticulturalist that she sometimes
gardened at night, removed yellow and white flowers planted by Lady
Avon and replaced them with roses of "normal colour".[71] One episode
at Chequers attracted considerable publicity. In January 1956 Lady
Avon politely requested the occupant of a farm worker's cottage on the
estate to hang her washing where it could not be seen by visitors.[43]
Although it seems that the washing may have been hung across a lime
walk, beyond the boundary of the cottage garden itself,[72] the story
was taken up by the Daily Mirror as an alleged example of Lady Avon's
high-handedness. Coming shortly after attacks in the press on Eden's
leadership, the timing was unfortunate.
In April 1956 Lady Avon hosted a dinner at Chequers for the visiting
Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin. Khrushchev
noted that Lady Avon's (sober) behaviour contradicted briefing from
the Soviet Embassy in London that she shared some of Winston
Churchill's "traits in the matter of drinking". Over dinner (when,
according to his hostess, he ate nothing[6] despite his reputation for
eating and drinking greedily[73]), he responded rather bluntly to her
question about the range of Soviet missiles that "they could easily
reach your island and quite a bit farther".[74] The following morning
Khrushchev mistook Lady Avon's room for Bulganin's but, having
provoked a cry after almost walking in on her, beat a hasty retreat
and did not identify himself. He confided later in Bulganin with whom
he "had a good laugh over the incident".[75]
Suez Crisis[edit]
As the Suez Crisis reached its climax in 1956, the Labour Party
opposed Anglo-French attacks on Egypt. On 1 November Lady Avon found
herself sitting next to Dora Gaitskell, wife of the Labour leader, in
the gallery of the House of Commons, whose sitting was suspended, due
to uproar, for the first time since 1924. "Can you stand it?" she
asked, to which, according to one version, the seasoned Mrs Gaitskell
replied, "the boys must have their fun".[58] (An alternative version
is that Mrs Gaitskell responded, "What I can't stand is the mounted
police charging the crowds outside".[76]) Three days later Lady Avon
attended, out of curiosity, an anti-Government "Law not War"
demonstration in Trafalgar Square, but thought it politic to withdraw
when she was recognised with friendly cheers.[77]
"The Suez Canal flowing through my drawing room"[edit]
In the humiliating aftermath of Suez in 1956, Lady Avon's most famous
public remark to a group of Conservative woman that, "in the past few
weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my
drawing room", was widely reported.[78] Lady Avon has since described
this observation as "silly, really idiotic",[8] though it remains
probably the most quoted utterance of the whole crisis. One example of
its durability was a journalist's observation some 54 years later,
with reference to the Iraq War of 2003, that "if, as Clarissa Eden
remarked, the Suez Canal ran through her drawing room, Iraq and the
decisions that flowed from it still haunt [the] Labour [Party] and
stir up antipathies and discomforts".[79] Another instance was in 2013
when options for airport expansion around London were being debated.
Journalist Rachel Johnson, sister of London's mayor Boris Johnson,
recalled Lady Avon's remark and added, "But for those of us in West
London, any further expansion to Heathrow and the airport really will
be in our back yards".[80] More directly, The Times newspaper cited
Lady Avon's words in 2011 in connection with a call by the outgoing
Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus (later Lord) O'Donnell for Prime Ministerial
spouses to receive greater support from public funds: "In a
constitutional monarchy, the consort of the prime minister is not an
official role ... Yet, as the Countess of Avon so vividly pointed out,
it can be impossible to keep public scrutiny at bay altogether".[81]
In Lady Avon's view, both she and her husband "were quite naive about
how the press works. Neither of us should have been, but we were."[82]
In his memoirs Eden recalled that, on several occasions during the
Suez crisis, he found time to sit in his wife's drawing room, whose
décor he described as green. There he was able to enjoy two sanguines
by André Derain and a bronze of a girl in her bath by Degas that
Alexander Korda had given the Edens as a wedding present.[83]
Power behind the throne?[edit]
During this period there were some who thought they detected undue
influence by Lady Avon over her husband. For example, Lady Jebb, wife
of the British Ambassador in Paris, alluded in her diary to
Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth and referred to "Clarissa's war".[84] (It
should be borne in mind, however, that her husband, Sir Gladwyn, a
"figure of some grandeur, if not hauteur",[85] was furious at his
exclusion from an Anglo-French summit in Paris two weeks before the
Suez invasion.[86]) In December 1956 Walter Monckton, a member of
Eden's Government who opposed the Suez invasion, apparently told a
Labour Member of Parliament, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, that Lady Avon was
a powerful force in politics, with great influence on her husband, and
that "now she knows he [Monckton] opposed Anthony she won't have
anything to do with him".[87] Monckton claimed, among other things,
that, during a rail strike in 1955, Eden, by then Prime Minister, had,
at his wife's urging, taken a tougher public stance in relation to the
railwaymen than that advised by Monckton, as Minister of Labour, and
senior civil servants[88] (although there is evidence that Churchill
had also privately advocated to Eden the need for a strong line.[89])
In private correspondence just after Suez, the Oxford historian Hugh
Trevor-Roper derided Lady Avon's remark about the Suez Canal flowing
through her drawing room and declared not only that the "vain and
foolish" Eden was "wholly managed" by her, but that she herself would
listen only to Cecil Beaton, whom he described (with reference to the
Svengali of the last Russian Czarina Alexandra) as her "Rasputin".[90]
Protective influence[edit]
Less dramatically, there were suggestions that Eden’s touchiness and
over-sensitivity to criticism, characteristics frequently remarked
upon by colleagues,[91] were exacerbated by Lady Avon (described by
historian Barry Turner, without explanation, as "equally touchy"[92]).
One of Eden's private secretaries claimed that "she had a habit of
stirring up Anthony when he didn't need it".[93] However, Eden's
biographer D. R. Thorpe concluded that such imputations arose from a
misreading of the Edens' relationship, noting also that, during Suez,
the only two people in whom Eden could confide without inhibition were
his wife and the Queen.[23] Indeed, as historian Ben Pimlott put it,
"if Lady Eden came to believe that the Suez Canal flowed through her
drawing room, the Queen must have felt pretty damp as well"[94] David
Dutton, another (not notably sympathetic) biographer of Eden, noted
that "some observers believed that Clarissa was excessively protective
and tended to exacerbate Eden's natural volatility" but also remarked
on her devoted companionship and that "during the dark days of the
Suez Crisis, [she] was at his side, supportive throughout".[95]
Eden himself paid tribute to his wife's adaptation of their domestic
arrangements to meet the "unsteady requirements" of this period,
noting that his digestion took less kindly to them.[83] There is some
evidence also that, when he was Foreign Secretary, Lady Avon had
influenced (or, at any rate endorsed) his patterns of work. A later
Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, has observed that, though he worked
hard, Eden did not keep office hours and often spent mornings working
in bed. For example, on 29 December 1952, Eden wrote: "Raining and
cold. Clarissa says that this is the right way to run the
F[oreign].O[ffice]. Lie in bed, direct office by telephone and read
Delacroix".[96]
Some of Lady Avon's friends may have concealed their true views about
Suez. For example, Isaiah Berlin assured "dearest Clarissa" that Eden
had acted with "great moral splendour", describing his stance as "very
brave", "very patriotic" and "absolutely just",[97] while opining to
another acquaintance that his policy had been "childish folly".[98]
Lady Avon herself recalled that, though she sought to "bolster up" her
husband and scanned the newspapers for anything that she thought he
ought to know, she did not feel she "knew enough about what was going
on to try and interfere in any way".[8] Even so, her knowledge of the
inner workings of Government was such that she was able to record in
her diary the precise stance, at a critical point of the Suez
operation, of every member of the Cabinet:

Aftermath of Suez[edit]
Goldeneye[edit]
The damage caused by the Suez Crisis to the Prime Minister's already
frail health persuaded the Edens to seek a month's rest cure at
"Goldeneye", Ian Fleming's "plain, low roofed" bungalow[100] on the
north coast of Jamaica. Lady Avon's concern for her husband's health
appears to have been decisive in the choice of destination, but it was
regarded by many, including Macmillan and the Government's Chief Whip,
Edward Heath, as politically unwise.[101] In addition, although
Goldeneye had a private beach and a large living room with glassless
louvre windows that enabled "the moist tropical air [to] blow
through",[102] Ian Fleming's close friend, the journalist Denis
Hamilton, who visited Goldeneye around that time, recalled a
"shack-like house" which Fleming "went around pretending [was] ... a
great palace ... a miniature Ritz".[103] Its bedrooms have been
described as "insignificant and small"[104] Ann Fleming warned Lady
Avon about some of its primitive aspects and suggested that Torquay, a
seaside resort in the south west of England, and a sun-lamp might have
been preferable.[105] However, Lady Avon has insisted that "Berkshire
or somewhere instead" would not have been suitable: "I thought if we
didn't go to Jamaica, he was going to drop down dead, literally".[106]
Installed in Jamaica after a good deal of secrecy and close liaison
between Downing Street and Ian Fleming's secretary, Una
Trueblood,[107] the Edens were temporary neighbours of Noël Coward
who thought Goldeneye "perfectly ghastly"[108] and presented them –
"poor dears" – with a basket of caviare, pâté de foie gras and
champagne.[40] Coward also sent Frank Cooper's marmalade and Huntley
and Palmer's biscuits, which, according to Lady Avon, "was not what we
had been looking forward to".[6] As was sometimes the case when
Fleming let Goldeneye, he asked his neighbour (and lover) Blanche
Blackwell, a member of the influential Lindo family, to ensure that
the Edens were properly looked after.[109] Indeed, it seems that Lady
Avon's mentioning that Blackwell had been helpful at Goldeneye led Ann
Fleming to suspect that her husband and Blackwell were having an
affair.[110] The publicity that the Edens' sojourn attracted is
credited by some with boosting Fleming's literary career, including
sales of his early novels about James Bond, the first of which, Casino
Royale, he had written at Goldeneye in 1952.[111] Lady Avon later
recalled her "astonishment" (and Ann Fleming's "rueful embarrassment")
at the success of the Bond books,[6] which continued after From Russia
with Love entered the best-seller lists in 1957.[112]
Eden's resignation[edit]
The Edens flew back to England just before Christmas 1956. A young
witness of their departure from Kingston airport recalled Lady Eden
looking "glacial" and her husband, pale.[113] Lady Avon noted that, on
their return, "everyone [was] looking at us with thoughtful
eyes".[114] Early in January 1957, the Edens stayed with the Queen at
Sandringham, where Sir Anthony informed her of his intention to resign
as Prime Minister.[115] Eden tendered his resignation formally at
Buckingham Palace on 9 January. When Harold Macmillan was appointed as
his successor in preference to R. A. Butler, Lady Avon wrote to Butler
(whom two years earlier she had described in her diary as "curiously
unnatural"[116]) that she thought politics "a beastly profession ...
and how greatly I admire your dignity and good humour".[117] (In 1952
she had told Duff Cooper that she thought modern politics something of
a "farce".[35])
Macmillan's biographer Alistair Horne noted that, of the various
animosities that arose before and during Macmillan's premiership, it
was the "loyal wives", among whom he counted Lady Avon and Lady
Butler, who "tended most to keep [them] alive".[118] Although there is
evidence of a long-standing and lasting rift between Eden and
Macmillan,[119] Eden himself maintained "a friendly (if not
conspicuously warm) relationship" with his successor,[118] often being
used as a "sounding board" by Macmillan who occasionally lunched with
the Edens at their home.[120] Lady Avon, on the other hand, was said
to have been consistently vitriolic about Macmillan[118] and recalled
to one of Eden's biographers that Churchill had found him too
"viewy".[121] There is some evidence that, following Suez, Macmillan
had briefed sections of the press that he himself intended to retire,
whereas his true intention had been to displace Eden as Prime
Minister,[122] and, as late as 2007, Lady Avon criticised his
behaviour as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the crisis, claiming
that he had been "too hasty" in using an American threat to withhold a
loan from the International Monetary Fund as "an excuse to back down"
from military action and had wept "crocodile tears" at Eden's
resignation.[123]
Shortly after Eden's resignation, he and Lady Avon sailed to New
Zealand for a further break. Their cabin steward, on what she
described as "the hellship Rangitata",[43] was the future Deputy Prime
Minister John Prescott.[124] Half a century later Prescott recalled
that, while kneeling down to clean the ship's brass, he had occasion
to admire a pair of legs that turned out to be Lady Eden's—"You
naturally look, don't you"—whereupon Sir Anthony tapped him on the
head.[125] When they arrived in New Zealand, which was among the few
countries publicly to have supported the Suez operation, the Edens
received a rapturous "red carpet" reception.[6]
Eden's retirement and death[edit]
Eden had been told by doctors that his life might be in danger if he
remained in office. In the event he was to live for another twenty
years. The Edens' home was at Alvediston, Wiltshire, where he died on
14 January 1977 and is buried. The last entry in Eden's diary, dated
11 September 1976, had read; "exquisite small vase of crimson glory
buds & mignonette from beloved C[larissa]".[126]
When Eden was taken mortally ill with liver cancer, he and Lady Avon
had just spent their final Christmas together at Hobe Sound, Florida
as guests of former New York Governor Averell Harriman, elder
statesman of the Democratic Party, and his English-born wife Pamela.
(Mrs Harriman was Lady Avon's exact contemporary, a débutante of
1938[127] who had also taken a room at the Dorchester during the
Second World War.[6] She had previously been married to Lady Avon's
cousin Randolph Churchill[128] and in the 1990s was President Bill
Clinton's Ambassador to Paris, where she died in 1997.) The Edens were
flown back to Britain in a Royal Air Force VC-10 that was diverted to
Miami after Prime Minister James Callaghan had been alerted to the
situation by Pamela Harriman's son, Winston.[129]
Widowhood[edit]
After her husband's death, Lady Avon received many tributes to her
devoted care in the later stages of his life. She moved to an
apartment in London in the 1980s. She invited firstly Robert Rhodes
James and later D. R. Thorpe to write official biographies of her
husband (Winston Churchill's biographer, Martin Gilbert, having
previously declined an invitation).[130] Published in 1986 and 2003
respectively, both offered a broadly sympathetic view of Eden's career
and were generally well received by critics. Between them they did
much to help restore Eden's reputation, which had taken such a
battering during the final months of his premiership. In 2003 a
research study by a Harvard clinician of Eden's medical condition and
surgery during the 1950s was published in the US with an
acknowledgement of Lady Avon's interest and co-operation.[131]
Lady Avon remained in touch with many influential friends. For
example, in the lead-up to the Falklands War of 1982, the Lord
Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, confided during a Cabinet meeting that the
former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had spoken to Lady Avon
of the risk of a "socialist" regime being established in
Argentina.[132] Lady Avon also attended various state occasions, as
well as gatherings of former Prime Ministers and their families. In
1972 (while her husband was still alive) she described to Cecil Beaton
the Duchess of Windsor's "very strange" and nervous demeanour—"Is
this my seat?" "Is this my prayer book?" "What do I do now?"—at the
funeral of her husband, the former king Edward VIII,[133] while thirty
years later Tony Blair's press secretary Alastair Campbell noted that,
at a dinner at 10 Downing Street in 2002 to mark Queen Elizabeth II's
Golden Jubilee, attended by five Prime Ministers and several relatives
of deceased Prime Ministers:

Prince Philip was deep in conversation with T[ony] B[lair], the
Countess of Avon, Macmillan's and Douglas-Home's families, and there
was lots of reminiscing about life in Number 10.[134]

In 1994, 17 years after her husband's death, Lady Avon unveiled a bust
of Eden at the Foreign Office. In 2013 she attended a memorial service
for Sir Guy Millard (1917–2013), one of Eden's long-serving private
secretaries and probably his last surviving close associate, having
been with him and Churchill at wartime meetings with Roosevelt and
Stalin and in Downing Street during the Suez Crisis.[135]
Lady Avon's longevity[edit]
Lady Avon was the youngest wife of an incumbent Prime Minister in the
twentieth century. She was only 36 when her husband resigned, and was
widowed at 56. She has outlived four later Prime Ministerial spouses
(but is four years younger than Lady Wilson of Rievaulx, widow of
Harold Wilson, the only spouse to have become a centenarian) and seen
the administrations of 11 subsequent Prime Ministers. By contrast,
Lady Dorothy Macmillan was 57 when her husband succeeded Eden and 63
when he resigned, dying just three years later, her husband outliving
her by 20 years.[136] As such Lady Avon has enjoyed unusual longevity
for a Prime Ministerial spouse, contributing, for example, to a
television documentary by Cherie Blair in 2005 about Prime Ministers'
wives[137] and to a three-part series the following year marking the
50th anniversary of Suez. In the latter, she recalled, among other
things, Eden's disillusion with the lack of American support for
British policy in 1956.[138] The critic A. A. Gill was among those who
praised Lady Avon's erudite performance in the Blair documentary
("bright as a button"), while sensing that she appeared not entirely
to approve of Mrs Blair.[139]
Lady Avon was 87 when her memoir appeared in 2007. A journalist who
interviewed her and her editor, Cate Haste, observed that Lady Avon
"seems slight and wan, as if painted in watercolour rather than oil",
but described her as "vigorous and knowing" in conversation.[140] In
April 2008 she and Haste appeared at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary
Festival,[141] the literature for this event observing that, although
Lady Avon was perhaps best known for her lament about the Suez Canal
flowing through her drawing room, "she was far more than a
drawing-room consort".
Popular culture[edit]
Lady Avon was played by Jennifer Daniel in Ian Curteis' 1979 drama for
BBC television, Suez 1956. In 2012 she was portrayed by Abigail
Cruttenden in Hugh Whitemore's play about the Suez crisis, A
Marvellous Year for Plums, that opened at the Chichester Festival
Theatre.[142] In the first episode of the BBC's The Hour (2011), also
set in 1956, a television producer Bel Rowley (Romola Garai) was
complimented by one of Eden's press officers for a feature about "Lady
Eden at home".[143] In the Netflix drama series, The Crown (2016), she
was portrayed by Anna Madeley.
Titles from birth[edit]

1920–1952: Miss Anne Clarissa Spencer-Churchill
1954–1961: Lady Eden
1961–1977: The Right Honourable The Countess of Avon
1977–present: The Right Honourable The Dowager Countess of Avon

Notes[edit]

^ See genealogical table of the Churchills in David Cannadine (1994)
Aspects of Aristocracy
^ Michael Bloch (2015) Closet Queens
^ Roy Jenkins (2001) Churchill, who points out that, although Kinsky
and Jennie Churchill had a protracted affair, Kinsky did not arrive in
London until a year after Jack Churchill's birth.
^ David Cannadine (1994) Aspects of Aristocracy.
^ Bloch, op.cit.
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Clarissa Eden (ed.
Cate Haste, 2007) A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden
^ Cherie Booth & Cate Haste (2004) The Goldfish Bowl: Married to
the Prime Minister 1955–1997
^ a b c d e f g h i Cherie Booth & Cate Haste (2004) The Goldfish
Bowl
^ a b See D. R. Thorpe (2003) Eden
^ a b Country Life, 8 September 2010
^ Lewis Broad (1955) Sir Anthony Eden: The Chronicles of a Career
^ a b Deborah Devonshire (2010) Wait For Me!
^ Anne de Courcy (1989) 1939: The Last Season
^ Another who did the season in 1938 was Sarah (Sally) Norton,
daughter of the 6th Lord Grantley. She had learnt fluent German in
Munich, but "despite her eighteen-inch waist and perfect legs" was
still single when war broke out in 1939. Jean Trumpington (2014)
Coming Up Trumps' '. On VE Day in 1945 Norton met the future 3rd
Viscount Astor and was engaged to him within a week (Daily Telegraph
obituary of Sarah Baring, 13 February 2013).
^ Clarissa Eden (ed Cate Haste, 2007) A Memoir: From Churchill to
Eden. Lady Avon later reflected that it turned out Maclean "wasn't a
proper Liberal boy either" (ibid).
^ Richard Brooks in Sunday Times, 13 September 2015 (reporting
publication of Andrew Lownie, The Lives of Guy Burgess).
^ Daphne Bennett (1984) Margot: A Life of the Countess of Oxford and
Asquith. Due to the war, mother and daughter never met again and died
within four months of each other in 1945. Elizabeth's daughter,
Priscilla (1920–2004), to whom Margot Asquith dedicated her second
volume of memoirs in 1933 (Margot Oxford, More Memories)—"one of the
loves of my life"—escaped Romania by hitch-hiking to Lebanon. She
too never saw her mother nor her grandmother again (Independent
obituary of Priscilla Bibesco, 27 November 2004).
^ See, for example, Gully Wells (Ayer's stepdaughter) in Sunday Times
News Review, 5 June 2011
^ Just after the war an Oxford don remarked to Paul Johnson, then an
undergraduate, "That's Ayer. Might have been a great philosopher.
Ruined by sex." (Michael Barber, 'Freddie Ayer (in flagrante)', The
Oldie, January 2015 at page 37.
^ John Carey in Sunday Times Culture, 30 October 2011 (reviewing
Matthew Sweet (2011) West End Front). Lady Diana Cooper, who, with her
husband Duff Cooper, also had an upper room at the Dorchester, wrote
to her son in Canada that "the All Clear wouldn't go and the
wakefulness was supported by the watcher on the Dorchester roof
walking up and down so very near my head. It kept me aware of how
little covering there was above us" (letter to John Julius Cooper, 5
September 1940: Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to
her Son John Julius Norwich 1939–1952 (ed John Julius Norwich,
2013)).
^ Quoted anonymously by Cecil Beaton in letter to Greta Garbo, 28
February 1948: see Hugo Vickers (1994) Loving Garbo
^ Jeremy Lewis, 'The man who dared publish Lolita', The Oldie, October
2015, page 28
^ a b c D. R. Thorpe (2003) Eden
^ Ed Smith, The Times, 15 December 2007
^ Charles Moore (2013) Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography –
Volume One: Not for Turning. In fact, it might have been said of both
women that (as Moore wrote of Thatcher's period at the Bar in the
1950s), "Without the slightest hint of impropriety, she ... sought and
enjoyed the company of clever, older men." Thatcher was leader of the
Conservative Party when Anthony Eden died in 1977, and Lady Avon had
corresponded with her about her husband's declining health: Clarissa
Eden, From Churchill to Eden.
^ Woodrow Wyatt, diary, 14 August 1986: Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, ed
Sarah Curtis (1998)
^ See, for example, Jeremey Lewis in The Oldie, March 2008: "highly
entertaining" and "crammed with good things"; more generally, The
Oldie Review of Books, Spring 2008.
^ Private Eye, 7 March 2008
^ Review in the London Evening Standard, quoted in The Oldie Review of
Books, Spring 2008.
^ Wyatt, diary, 15 January 1986
^ John Colville, The Fringes of Power – 10 Downing Street Diaries
1939–1955 (Hodder & Stoughton, 1985), diary entries for 17 June
1940 and 4 August 1941
^ See Duff Cooper (1954) Old Men Forget. Cooper and his wife Lady
Diana had, like Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, taken a room at the
Dorchester Hotel in the early years of the Second World War.
^ Wyatt, diary, 7 April 1986. This appears to derive from Cooper's own
observation to Lady Avon that she was the only woman he had loved from
whom he had sought no more: see Clarissa Eden (2007) A Memoir: From
Churchill to Eden. According to historian Hugo Vickers, Pinna Cruger
(1896–1950), wife of a millionaire haberdasher, Bertram Cruger, and
possibly mistress, for a time, of the Prince of Wales, later Edward
VIII, "backed off Duff Cooper when she detected that he was happily
married" (quoted by Valentine Low in The Times, 7 December 2013).
Bertram Cruger was an admirer of Cooper's wife Diana, the two having
met in New York City: editorial footnote in The Duff Cooper Diaries
1915–1951, ed John Julius Norwich (2005), page 197.
^ Duff Cooper, diary, 24 November 1947: The Duff Cooper Diaries
1915–1951, ed John Julius Norwich (2005). John Charmley (1986) Duff
Cooper quotes this reference to Eden, but protects Lady Avon's
identity, noting that "the name is given in Duff's diary". In 1983,
when Conservative Party chairman Cecil Parkinson informed Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher that he had been having an affair with his
secretary, her initial reaction was said to have been, "What's the
problem? They tell me Anthony Eden jumped into bed with every
good-looking woman he ever met" (Jonathan Aitken (2013) Margaret
Thatcher: Power and Personality).
^ a b c John Charmley (1986) Duff Cooper
^ Letter from Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, to Nancy Mitford, 27 May
1959
^ See Hugh Vickers (1994) Loving Garbo
^ Sara Wheeler reviewing Sofka Zinovieff (2014) The Mad Boy, Lord
Berners, My Grandmother and Me in the Times Saturday Review, 11
October 2014, page 15. Lady Avon herself recalled that, when she first
spotted Heber-Percy wandering round the grounds of Faringdon and asked
who he was, Lord Berners described him as his 'agent' (Memoirs,
op.cit.), although in fact they were lovers.
^ Laura Thompson (2003) Life in a Cold Climate. Heywood Hill, which
bore the name of its owner, opened in 1936. Nancy Mitford originally
worked as an assistant there, but took over the running of it when
Hill was called up for war service.
^ a b John Pearson (1966) The Life of Ian Fleming
^ Wyatt, diary, 16 March 1987; Cherie Booth & Cate Haste (2004)
The Goldfish Bowl. Goodman was a major figure in the British artistic
establishment. Kenneth Tynan described him in 1972 as "the antibody of
our time ... [N]ever [holding] elective office, he has wielded more
power than anyone in the country, except the Prime Minister during the
past decade": Diary, 21 April 1972 (The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan (ed.
John Lahr), 2001).
^ John Campbell (2014) Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life.
^ a b c d e Robert Rhodes James (1986) Anthony Eden
^ Martin Gilbert (1983) Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill 1939–1941
^ Clarissa Eden (2007) A Memoir, which gives the date of the lunch as
31 May 1940. According to Gilbert (op. cit), Churchill was in France
on 31 May: see also Julian Thompson (2008) Dunkirk: Retreat to
Victory, who describes 31 May, when Churchill attended the Supreme War
Council in Paris, as "the day on which there was so much top-level
discussion and dissent among the French and British".
^ Lord Butler (1971) The Art of the Possible
^ Robert Rhodes James (1986) Anthony Eden; Cherie Booth & Cate
Haste (2004) The Goldfish Bowl. Rhodes James dated this episode to
1947, but Booth & Haste's similar account referred to a dinner
party in 1946 hosted by Emerald Cunard
^ Harold Macmillan, diary, 13–15 August 1952: The Macmillan Diaries:
The Cabinet Years 1950–1957, ed. Peter Catterall (2003)
^ Ben Schott, The Times, 27 June 2007. No British Prime Minister has
been married more than twice.
^ Quoted in Lewis Broad (1955) Sir Anthony Eden
^ ibid.
^ D. R. Thorpe (2003) Eden; Cherie Booth & Cate Haste (2004) The
Goldfish Bowl
^ A. N. Wilson (2006) Betjeman. Lady Avon's brother John had once been
engaged to Betjeman's wife, then Penelope Chetwode, daughter of Field
Marshal Sir Philip Chetwode: see Clarissa Eden (2007) A Memoir.
According to Wilson, Penelope's love for John Churchill had "waned".
^ John Colville, diary, 11 August 1952: Colville (1985) The Fringes of
Power, Volume II
^ Statement, 31 October 1955
^ The Queen (part 1), Channel 4, 29 November 2009. Princess Margaret
was then third in line of succession after The Duke of Cornwall and
The Princess Anne and so, in itself, renouncing her right of
succession would have been largely a technicality.
^ Peter Townsend (1978) Time and Chance
^ a b Hugh Thomas, The Suez Affair (Pelican, 1970)
^ See generally Braasch, John W. (2003). "Anthony Eden's (Lord Avon)
Biliary Tract Saga". Ann. Surg. 238 (5): 772–775.
doi:10.1097/01.sla.0000094443.60313.da. PMC 1356158 .
PMID 14578742.
^ Quoted in Barry Turner (2006) Suez 1956. The extract in Turner
refers to "Harold Evans", but this must be a mistake for Horace Evans,
the royal physician.
^ Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh, quoted in Barry Turner (2006) Suez 1956
^ a b Cecil Beaton, diary quoted in Hugo Vickers (1994) Loving Garbo
^ See, for example, David Cannadine, New York Review of Books, vol.
xxxiv, 22 October 1987
^ Alan Clark (1998) The Tories: Conservatives and the Nation State
1922–1997
^ In terms of actual numbers, the largest popular vote for a party was
in 1992 when over 14 million people voted Conservative (leaving John
Major with an overall majority of only 21 seats): Peter Snowdon (2010)
Back from the Brink
^ John Colville (1985) The Fringes of Power, Volume II
^ For example, Donald McLachlan, Daily Telegraph, 3 January 1956
^ John Campbell (1983) F. E. Smith, First Earl of Birkenhead.
According to a more recent historian, Lady Pamela was "an able,
ambitious woman who slaked her frustration at being denied formal
responsibilities and power by outrushes of political malice": Richard
Davenport-Hines (2013) An English Affair.
^ Pamela Berry was another of Lady Avon's acquaintances who had taken
accommodation at the Dorchester Hotel during the Second World War: see
Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to her Son John
Julius Norwich 1939–1952 (op.cit.).
^ Harold Macmillan, diary 26 July 1956; D. R. Thorpe (2003) Eden. It
is worth noting that, in 1962, Nancy Mitford, who had once been very
close to Lady Pamela, wrote to Evelyn Waugh that "she is spoilt ...
her faults are getting worse and she doesn't mellow" (Laura Thompson
(2003) Life in a Cold Climate). In the same year, Waugh observed that
"Pam joins Randolph [Churchill] among the legion of the damned" after
she had apparently betrayed a confidence in the columns of the
Telegraph (ibid). Lady Pamela died in 1982, but there have been
suggestions that, in 1988, a Telegraph obituary of Beryl Maudling,
widow of Reginald Maudling, Eden's Minister of Supply and Chancellor
of the Exchequer under Macmillan, was "unnecessarily spiteful"
because, as Maudling's biographer put it, of "some personal matter
connected with the Maudlings' relationship with the Berry family":
Lewis Baston (2004) Reggie, footnote 5 to chapter 27.
^ Alistair Horne (1989) Macmillan: Volume II 1957–1986. Even so,
Lady Dorothy, who, like Lady Avon, did not like Chequers much,
complained to her daughter-in-law that "they would never let me plant
anything ... they want me to plant pansies" ("and she didn't like
pansies": Viscountess Macmillan of Ovenden, quoted in Booth &
Haste, op.cit.)
^ Ann Fleming, diary 13 January 1956: The Letters of Ann Fleming, ed
Mark Amory (1985)
^ Macmillan's view, quoted in D. R. Thorpe (2010) Supermac. Macmillan
regarded such greed as an indication of Khruschev's inner character,
rather as Anthony Eden had taken a similar view of Benito Mussolini's
objectionable table manners in the 1930s (Thorpe, ibid.)
^ Khrushchev Remembers (into. Edward Crankshaw, 1971). Khrushchev
noted that Lady Avon "bit her tongue" at this answer, which he
admitted was "a bit rude".
^ Khrushchev Remembers (1971)
^ Cherie Booth & Cate Haste (2004) The Goldfish Bowl. Lady Avon's
own memoir of 2007 appears to confirm this version.
^ Cherie Booth & Cate Haste (2004) The Goldfish Bowl; Dominic
Sandbrook (2005) Never Had It So Good
^ Speech at Gateshead, 20 November 1956; Oxford Dictionary of Modern
Quotations (1991), 71:19
^ Anne McElvoy in London Evening Standard, 29 September 2010
^ Mail on Sunday, 22 December 2013
^ The Times, leading article, 17 December 2011
^ Daily Telegraph, 21 October 2007
^ a b The Memoirs of Sir Anthony Eden: Full Circle (1960)
^ The Diaries of Cynthia Gladwyn, ed Miles Jebb (1995)
^ D. R. Thorpe (2010) Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan, page
472, note 35
^ See Turner (2006) Suez 1956; Thorpe (2010) Supermac. Thorpe referred
to Jebb's further sidelining at the disastrous Paris summit of 1960
during which Macmillan, having rejected official advice, visited
Khrushchev at the Soviet Embassy with only two of his private
secretaries in attendance.
^ Tony Benn, diary, 15 December 1956: Benn (1994) Years of Hope:
Diaries, Papers and Letters 1949–1962
^ Benn, op. cit.; David Kynaston (2009) Family Britain 1951–57
^ Andrew Roberts (1994) Eminent Churchillians
^ Hugh Trevor-Roper, Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard
Berenson (ed Richard Davenport-Hines, 2005)
^ For example, Anthony Nutting (1967) No End of a Lesson; Lord Butler
(1971) The Art of the Possible; Lord Boyle in Alan Thompson (1971) The
Day Before Yesterday; W. F. Deedes (2004) Brief Lives
^ Barry Turner (2006) Suez 1956
^ Sir Philip de Zulueta, quoted in Alistair Horne (1988) Macmillan,
Volume I: 1894–1956
^ Ben Pimlott (1996) The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II
^ David Dutton (1997) Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation. Whatever
effect Lady Avon had on Eden's temperament, it has been far from
uncommon for Prime Ministerial behaviour to be influenced by
protective spouses. Despite strong evidence of Sarah Brown's calming
influence on her husband, Gordon Brown, who was Prime Minister from
2007–10, it has been suggested that "her intense love and protection
... made her deeply angry when he was under attack, and this could
heighten his paranoia about those who were seeking to do him down":
Anthony Seldon & Guy Lodge (2010) Brown at 10. It is clear also
that, at various stages before and during the Falklands War of 1982,
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher received from her husband, Denis, the
sort of moral support that it was difficult for others to provide:
Charles Moore (2013) Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography –
Volume One: Not for Turning; Jonathan Aitken (2013) Margaret Thatcher:
Power and Personality.
^ Douglas Hurd (2010) Choose Your Weapons: The British Foreign
Secretary. Such working methods were by no means unique: Churchill
frequently worked in bed and often slept in the afternoon. It should
be noted also that Monday, 29 December 1952 was the first working day
after Christmas and that Eden's (and his wife's) remarks may, to an
extent, have been tongue-in-cheek.
^ Isaiah Berlin (ed Henry Hardy & Jennifer Holmes, 2009)
Enlightening: Letters 1946–1960; David Kynaston (2009) Family
Britain 1951–1957
^ Isaiah Berlin (ed Hardy & Holmes, 2009) Enlightening: Letters
1946–1960: see Sunday Times Culture, 7 June 2009. Berlin seems to
have had a reputation for saying one thing to one person and something
different to another: see Jeremy Lewis in The Oldie, February 2016, at
page 37.
^ Referring to a meeting of the Cabinet on 4 November 1956: see
Thorpe, Eden; Peter Hennessy (2006) Having It So Good: Britain in the
Fifties
^ Nicholas Rankin (2011) Ian Fleming's Commandos: The Story of 30
Assault Unit in WWII
^ Edward Heath (1998) The Course of My Life
^ Rankin, op.cit.
^ Quoted in Antiques Trade Gazette, 29 September 2012. Hamilton
appears to have visited Fleming in Jamaica while he was writing From
Russia with Love, which was published in 1957.
^ Matthew Parker (2014) Goldeneye – Where Bond Was Born: Ian
Fleming's Jamaica
^ The Letters of Ann Fleming, ed Mark Amory (1985)
^ Cherie Booth & Cate Haste (2004) The Goldfish Bowl. As regards
Chequers, Eden's own wariness about its effect on his health was
long-standing. In November 1942, at a delicate point in the Second
World War, he confided to his diary: "I don't know why it is that
Chequers never suits me. Cold still heavy ... and Rossdale's [his
doctor's] cocaine makes me feel giddy" (quoted in Andrew Roberts
(2008) Masters and Commanders). The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev,
whom the Edens entertained at Chequers in 1956, noted "an unpleasant
odour and a sticky film all over everything inside the house" due to
the burning of anthracite in iron stoves: Khruschev Remembers (1971).
^ Mark Edmonds, quoting Una Trueblood, in Sunday Times, 4 October
2012. Despite Lady Avon's close friendship with Ann Fleming, it
appears that, because of the need for secrecy, the initial approach to
Ian Fleming was made by a senior Government minister, Alan
Lennox-Boyd, who gave the impression that he himself wanted Goldeneye
for a holiday: Richard Davenport-Hines (2013) An English Affair. Una
Trueblood was probably the model for Mary Trueblood, a glamorous MI6
secretary in Fleming's Dr. No (1958).
^ Quoted in Rankin, op.cit. Coward thought Goldenye looked like a
medical centre and referred to it as "Goldeneye, nose and throat"
(John Ure in Country Life, 10 September 2014). Coward recalled the
contrast between the lifestyle of James Bond in Fleming's books and
that at Goldeneye. He claimed that he used to cross himself before
eating there because the food was so "abominable" – "his guests
remembered all those delicious meals had put into his books": The Wit
of Noel Coward (compiled by Dick Richards, 1968).
^ Miranda Seymour in Sunday Times Review, 7 October 2012; Matthew
Parker (2014) Goldeneye – Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's
Jamaica. Blanche Blackwell (1912–2017), who Ann Fleming described as
"my husband's Jamaican wife" (John Ure in Country Life, 10 September
2014), has often been cited as the inspiration for the character of
Pussy Galore in Fleming's novel Goldfinger. She died at the age of
104. Her son Chris founded Island Records.
^ The Times obituary of Blanche Backwell, 12 August 2017
^ David Cannadine (2002) In Churchill's Shadow refers to "a sojourn
that did nothing for Eden's reputation but a great deal for
Fleming's". Another factor in the success of the Bond books, a few
years later, was the enthusiastic endorsement of President John F.
Kennedy and his brother Robert: see Klaus Dodds in History Today,
October 2012 at p 51; Ben McIntyre in Times Saturday Review, 29
September 2012. Allen Dulles, Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency, was also a fan, exchanging copies of Bond novels with John
Kennedy and adding his own comments in the margins: see Alex von
Tunzelmann (2011) Red Heat. The first Bond film (Dr. No) did not
appear until 1962.
^ Cannadine, op.cit. Rankin (op.cit.) has speculated that "the
cultural snobbery of his wife, Ann, and her friends" may have told
Fleming that "there was something suspect in the thriller genre ...
that it was not the 99.99 per cent pure gold of proper literature".
^ Susanna Johnson, The Oldie, October 2016, page 18. Twenty-year old
Johnson, then Susanna Chancellor, had won a competition in the Daily
Mirror newspaper about "how to solve the Suez crisis", the prize for
which was a holiday in Jamaica to coincide with the Edens' sojourn.
^ Diary, 14 December 1956, quoted in D. R. Thorpe (2010) Supermac: The
Life of Harold Macmillan
^ Ben Pimlott (1996) The Queen
^ Diary, 26 January 1955: Clarissa Eden (2007) A Memoir: From
Churchill to Eden
^ Butler (1971) The Art of the Possible. Writing to Eden on 10 January
1956 to say "goodbye with all my affection to you and to Clarissa",
the future Prime Minister Lord Home observed that "politics is in some
ways a nasty profession ..." (quoted in D. R. Thorpe (1996) Alec
Douglas-Home).
^ a b c Alistair Horne (1989) Macmillan: Volume II 1957–1986
^ See, for example, D. R. Thorpe (2010) Supermac: The Life of Harold
Macmillan, citing Martin Gilbert's research for his biographical study
of Churchill
^ D. R. Thorpe (2010) Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan
^ D. R. Thorpe (2010) Supermac. Thorpe produced biographies of both
Eden and Macmillan.
^ Davenport-Hines, op.cit.
^ Daily Telegraph, 21 October 2007. Vice-President Richard Nixon was
evidently the source of Eisenhower's regrets: see editorial note in
Clarissa Eden (2007) A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden. According to
Jonathan Aitken, Macmillan advised Margaret Thatcher in 1982 to
exclude the Chancellor of the Exchequer from her Falklands War Cabinet
to avoid Treasury influence on decision making: Margaret Thatcher:
Power and Personality, op.cit.
^ Dominic Sandbrook (2005) Never Had It So Good
^ Atticus, Sunday Times, 21 January 2007. According to one account,
Prescott felt himself patronised by Eden during the voyage and
retaliated by contriving "accidentally" to spill hot soup over Eden's
crotch: Jerry Hayes (2014) An Unexpected MP.
^ Quoted in Robert Rhodes James (1986) Anthony Eden
^ Deborah Devonshire (2010) Wait For Me! The Dowager Duchess of
Devonshire, also a débutante in 1938, recalled Pamela Digby (as she
then was) as "rather fat, fast and the butt of many tears" (ibid.)
^ Max Hastings (2009) Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940–45
^ Robert Rhodes James (1986) Eden; D. R. Thorpe (2003) Eden
^ Daily Telegraph obituary of Sir Martin Gilbert, 4 February 2015
^ Braasch, John W. (November 2003). "Anthony Eden's (Lord Avon)
Biliary Tract Saga". Ann. Surg. 238 (5): 772–775.
doi:10.1097/01.sla.0000094443.60313.da. PMC 1356158 .
PMID 14578742.
^ Charles Moore (2013) Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography –
Volume One: Not for Turning. Kissinger was presumably referring to a
possible consequence of Britain's evicting Argentine forces from the
Falkland Islands, which they had invaded in April 1982, or of a
political and economic backlash against American interests if the US
publicly supported Britain.
^ Beaton diary, 5 June 1972, quoted in Philip Ziegler (1990) King
Edward VIII. Anthony Eden had been Foreign Secretary throughout Edward
VIII's short reign. Lady Avon also commented to Beaton on Elizabeth
II's "motherly and nannie like tenderness" towards the Duchess at the
funeral.
^ Alastair Campbell (2007) The Blair Years, diary entry, 29 April
2002. Invitations to a comparable luncheon to mark Elizabeth's Diamond
Jubilee in 2012 were restricted to (surviving) Prime Ministers and
their spouses.
^ James Hughes-Onslow in The Oldie, September 2013
^ Booth & Haste, op.cit.
^ Married to the Prime Minister (Channel 4), 6 December 2005, based on
Cherie Booth & Cate Haste (2004) The Goldfish Bowl
^ Suez: A Very British Crisis (BBC TV), 31 October 2006
^ Review in Sunday Times Culture, 11 December 2005
^ Nigel Farndale, Daily Telegraph, 21 October 2007. Farndale wondered
whether Lady Avon's appearance was "a trick of the light", noting that
it was an overcast morning and there was no electric lighting.
^ Sunday Times Culture, 16 March 2008
^ Daily Mail Review, 27 May 2012. At 44, Cruttenden was several years
older than Lady Avon had been in 1956.
^ Episode broadcast on 19 July 2011. In the same scene Ms Rowley
enquired after the health of "Prime Minister Eden", an improbable mode
of expression in Britain.

External links[edit]

Clarissa Eden – a memoir: photographic images

Honorary titles

Preceded by
Dame Clementine Churchill
Spouse of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1955–1957
Succeeded by
Dorothy Macmillan

The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898)
Savrola (1899 novel)
The River War (1899)
London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900)
Ian Hamilton's March (1900)
Lord Randolph Churchill (1906)
The World Crisis (1923–1931, five volumes)
My Early Life (1930)
Marlborough: His Life and Times (1933–1938, four volumes)
Great Contemporaries (1937)
Arms and the Covenant (1938)
The Second World War (1948–1963, six volumes)
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–1958, four volumes)

Speeches

"Blood, toil, tears, and sweat"
"Be ye men of valour"
"We shall fight on the beaches"
"This was their finest hour"
"Never was so much owed by so many to so few"
"Iron Curtain"